SMART MATERIAL

Smart materials have one or more properties that can be dramatically altered. Most everyday materials have physical properties, which cannot be significantly altered; for example if oil is heated it will become a little thinner, whereas a smart material with variable viscosity may turn from a fluid which flows easily to a solid. These include piezoelectric materials, magneto-rheostatic materials, electrorheostatic materials, and shape memory alloys. Each individual type of smart material has a different property which can be significantly altered, such as viscosity, volume, and conductivity. The property that can be altered influences what types of applications the smart material can be used for.

The significance of smart materials and systems.

Smart materials and systems open up new possibilities, such as clothes that can interact with a mobile phone or structures that can repair themselves. They also allow existing technology to be improved. Using a smart material instead of conventional mechanisms to sense and respond, can simplify devices, reducing weight and the chance of failure.

Application of smart material

Structural health monitoring - Embedding sensors within structures to monitor stress and damage can reduce maintenance costs and increase lifespan. This is already used in over forty bridges worldwide. Self-repair - One method in development involves embedding thin tubes containing uncured resin into materials. When damage occurs, these tubes break, exposing the resin which fills any damage and sets. Self-repair could be important in inaccessible environments such as underwater or in space. The European Space Agency is collaborating on work in this area.

Environmental risks
Smart materials and systems are hugely varied and are applied in a wide range of fields. It is hard to make generalisations about their environmental impact as this depends on the specific materials and applications. Smart materials are

either too early in their development or used in such small quantities that this is not yet an issue.

SHAPE MEMORY ALLOY

A shape-memory alloy is an alloy that "remembers" its original, coldforged shape: returning the pre-deformed shape by heating. This material is a lightweight, solid-state alternative to conventional actuators such as hydraulic, pneumatic, and motor-based systems. Shapememory alloys have applications in industries including medical and aerospace. The three main types of shape-memory alloys are the copper-zincaluminium-nickel, copper-aluminium-nickel, and nickel-titanium (NiTi) alloys but SMAs can also be created by alloying zinc, copper,gold and iron. NiTi alloys are generally more expensive and change from austenite to martensite upon cooling; Mf is the temperature at which the transition to martensite completes upon cooling. Accordingly, during heating As and Af are the temperatures at which the transformation from martensite to austenite starts and finishes. Repeated use of the shape-memory effect may lead to a shift of the characteristic transformation temperatures (this effect is known as functional fatigue, as it is closely related with a change of microstructural and functional properties of the material).[1] The transition from the martensite phase to the austenite phase is only dependent on temperature and stress, not time, as most phase changes are, as there is no diffusion involved. Similarly, the austenite structure receives its name from steel alloys of a similar structure. It is the reversible diffusionless transition between these two phases that results in special properties. While martensite can be formed from austenite by rapidly cooling carbon-steel, this process is not reversible, so steel does not have shape-memory properties. The medical and aerospace and marine industries are the largest consumers of shape memory components. Some of their applications are: Medical Industry - Stents - A device used to treat coronary disease. It would be inserted in the deformed shape and would expand upon reaching body temperature to open arteries and increase blood flow.

Vena-Cava Filters - A device used to trap blood clots. Inserted as a small cylinder, it reverts to an umbrella shaped filter to trap small blood clots and prevent them from travelling to parts of the body where they may have a detrimental effect. Dental and Orthodontic Archwires - These work similar to a spring. They apply a continuous and gentle force correcting misaligned teeth, as opposed to the periodic and uncomfortable tightening required by stainless steels. Aerospace and Marine - Fluid Fittings - SMA couplings are available that seal metal to metal with large radial clamping forces. Supplied in cold couplings are simply placed over the pipe to be connected and they shrink as they warm up. Other areas of Application - Spectacle frames, Underwired brassieres, Pipe jointing systems, Temperature control systems In this figure, (T) represents the martensite fraction. The difference between the heating transition and the cooling transition gives rise to hysteresis where some of the mechanical energy is lost in the process. The shape of the curve depends on the material properties of the shape-memory alloy, such as the alloying and work hardening.

Functionally Graded Material

A functionally graded material (FGM) is a two-component composite characterised by a compositional gradient from one component to the other. In contrast, traditional composites are homogeneous mixtures, and they therefore involve a compromise between the desirable properties of the component materials. Since significant proportions of an FGM contain the pure form of each component, the need for compromise is eliminated. The properties of both components can be fully utilised. For example, the toughness of a metal can be mated with the refractoriness of a ceramic, without any compromise in the toughness of the metal side or the refractoriness of the ceramic side. The basic unit for FGM representation is maxel. The term maxel was introduced in 2005 by Rajeev Dwivedi and Radovan Kovacevic at Research Center for Advanced Manufacturing (RCAM). The attributes of maxel include the location and volume fraction of individual material components.

A maxel is also used in the context of the additive manufacturing processes (such as stereolithography, selective laser sintering, fused deposition modeling, etc.) to describe a physical voxel (a portmanteau of the words 'material' and 'voxel'), which defines the build resolution of either a rapid prototyping or rapid manufacturing process, or the resolution of a design produced by such fabrication means. There are many areas of application for FGM. The concept is to make a composite material by varying the microstructure from one material to another material with a specific gradient. This enables the material to have the best of both materials. If it is for thermal, or corrosive resistance or malleability and toughness both strengths of the material may be used to avoid corrosion, fatigue, fracture and stress corrosion cracking. The transition between the two materials can usually be approximated by means of a power series. The aircraft and aerospace industry and the computer circuit industry are very interested in the possibility of materials that can withstand very high thermal gradients [3]. This is normally achieved by using a ceramic layer connected with a metallic layer. The Air Vehicles Directorate has conducted a Quasi-static bending test results of functionally graded titanium/titanium boride test specimens which can be seen below [4]. The test correlated to the finite element analysis (FEA) using a quadrilateral mesh with each element having its own structural and thermal properties. Advanced Materials and Processes Strategic Research Programme (AMPSRA) have done analysis on producing a thermal barrier coating using Zr02 and NiCoCrAlY. Their results have proved successful but no results of the analytical model are published. The rendition of the term that relates to the additive fabrication processes has its origins at the RMRG (Rapid Manufacturing Research Group) at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom. The term forms a part of a descriptive taxonomy of terms relating directly to various particulars relating to the additive CAD-CAM manufacturing processes, originally established as a part of the research conducted by architect Thomas Modeen into the application of the aforementioned techniques in the context of architecture.

PIEZOELECTRIC MATERIAL
Piezoelectricity ) is the charge which accumulates in certain solid materials in response to applied mechanical stress. The word piezoelectricity means electricity resulting from pressure. Means to squeeze or press, and electric or electron (), which stands [2] for amber, an ancient source of electric charge. Piezoelectricity is the direct result of the piezoelectric effect.

The piezoelectric effect describes the relation between a mechanical stress and an electrical voltage in solids. It is reversbile: an applied mechanical stress will generate a voltage and an applied voltage will change the shape of the solid by a small amount (up to a 4% change in volume). In physics, the piezoelectric effect can be described as the the link between electrostatics and mechanics.

History The piezoelectric effect was discovered in 1880 by the Jacques and Pierre Curie brothers. They found out that when a mechanical stress was applied on crystals such as tourmaline, tourmaline, topaz, quartz, Rochelle salt and cane sugar, electrical charges appeared, and this voltage was proportional to the stress. First applications were piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers and soon swinging quartz for standards of frequency (quartz clocks). An everyday life application example is your car's airbag sensor. The material detects the intensity of the shock and sends an electricla signal which triggers the airbag. Piezoelectric materials

The piezoelectric effect occurs only in non conductive materials. Piezoelectric materials can be divided in 2 main groups: crystals and cermaics. The most well-known piezoelectric material is quartz (SiO2).

APPLICATION OF Pizeoelectric material

Direct piezoelectricity of some substances like quartz, as mentioned above, can generate potential differences of thousands of volts. The best-known application is the electric cigarette lighter: pressing the button causes a spring-loaded hammer to hit a piezoelectric crystal, producing a sufficiently high voltage electric current that flows across a small spark gap, thus heating and igniting the gas. The portable sparkers used to light gas grills or stoves work the same way, and many types of gas burners now have built-in piezo-based ignition systems.

A piezoelectric transformer is a type of AC voltage multiplier. Unlike a conventional transformer, which uses magnetic coupling between input and output, the piezoelectric transformer uses acousticcoupling. An input voltage is applied across a short length of a bar of piezoceramic material such as PZT, creating an alternating stress in the bar by the inverse piezoelectric effect and causing the whole bar to vibrate. The vibration frequency is chosen to be the resonant frequency of the block, typically in the 100 kilohertz to 1 megahertz range.